Jessica Foos Jones is a writer, artist, life coach and workshop facilitator. She received a B.A. from Georgetown University, a BFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and an M.F.A from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. 

She has written for the Associated Press and People Magazine, and she has exhibited ceramic art at galleries in Santa Barbara, CA, San Francisco, CA, Charleston, SC, Sullivan’s Island, SC, Shanghai and Jing De Zhen, China. 
She lives in Mount Pleasant, SC.

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The reason I am so interested in sharing this is because of what I learned after an awful accident I was in several years ago. It left me in a state of gratitude for being alive. The silver lining of the accident was that for a few weeks afterwards, I felt very little negativity, stress or worry. During this time, I didn’t feel worried and I didn’t have the usual inner-critic. My mind was pretty still.
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I was hit by a pickup truck going 40 miles an hour while I was running across a crosswalk to catch a bus to work in the morning. I was desperate to catch the bus because I was late.
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The light was green when I started crossing, though the pedestrian signal blinked, "Don't Walk". As I was jogging across the crosswalk, my eyes riveted on the bus, I was hit and knocked unconscious. I obviously did not look both ways! The police report said I was thrown into the air. A woman working at the bank on the corner said she saw my body flying through the air and she called an ambulance.
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I was in the hospital for two weeks and in a wheelchair until my bones healed. For some reason, I believed I would heal completely. Nobody told me this. I just believed it. I am not sure exactly why I believed this. 
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I did heal completely and quickly. The surgeon was amazed. I think a lot of the reason I healed so well and so quickly was because for a few weeks after the accident  my mind was relatively still and I had a feeling of inner peace. I was very grateful to be alive and for those first few weeks I did not feel stress, worry or anxiety. I had a feeling of equanimity. I had a sense that all was well even though I was in a wheelchair and my life had been turned upside down.
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This positive, calm state of mind just happened to me. I did not work on having this. It just was. I learned afterwards that if a person feels stress or negativity then the body goes into fight or flight, and it is only when the body relaxes and the brain waves slow down, that the body is able to heal well.
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As the weeks passed and I healed, the feelings of stress, worry and anxiety came back. I remembered, though, the state of mind I had before, when I was not stressed, anxious or worried, when I had been so grateful to just be alive; when I would look at the leaves on trees and feel completely present in the moment, feeling a sense of awe.
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On the advice of a friend, in order to learn how to once again feel the still and peaceful state of mind I had right after the accident, and release the stress, anxiety and worry that I again was feeling, I read Eckhart Tolle's, “The Power of Now.” I understood it intellectually, but I had difficulty being more than a few seconds in a state of mind that was still, without the self-critic, negativity or thoughts racing through my mind. Over the years after the accident, with meditation and a lot of research in recent neuroscience, I learned easy ways to slow the mind chatter, and "regulate" myself to feel grounded in my body, safe and calm.
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I learned among other things, to feel awareness of the five senses, and awareness of space around me, instead of being focused in my mind and in my thoughts. The very effective method I learned is simple and can be done throughout the day with very immediate and very positive effects.